Navigating Year-End Fundraising in an Election Year: Strategies for Nonprofits to Thrive

The 2024 presidential election cycle is proving to be like no other, presenting unique challenges for nonprofits as they prepare for their year-end fundraising campaigns. But fear not! There are a handful of ways to positively impact your fundraising efforts against this backdrop.

Increasing Visibility and Engagement During Election Cycles

There is no doubt that nonprofits will be competing for the attention of donors and supporters ahead of the election in November. Practically speaking, advertising is much more expensive in September, October and November as demand increases, and after an election, we regularly see donor fatigue. For nonprofit fundraisers, all of our assets (emails, direct mail, advertising units, etc.) need to be hyper-targeted, leverage emotional and visual storytelling and apply an extremely personalized approach.

In other words, your normal end-of-year fundraising strategy — elevated. Your storytelling needs to connect personally and emotionally with potential donors, and visual content must truly capture and maintain donor attention.

Adapting Fundraising Strategies for Uncertainty

We know capturing donors’ attention will be competitive through November 5. We also know Thanksgiving is late this year, on November 28, pushing GivingTuesday into December. On a positive note, instead of being on a weekend like last year, December 30 and 31 fall on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

With this in mind, what is certain is that the end of the year is late this year, truncating our normal fundraising appeal cycle. This has implications for when nonprofits should be in market with their paid media ads and when they can expect donors to be most responsive to solicitations. Regarding the election and your narrative strategy, there are three likely scenarios to anticipate starting November 6: the Democratic candidate wins, the Republican candidate wins, or a winner has not been confirmed and may even be disputed in the courts.

For your planning purposes now and depending on your nonprofit, you can time out when your pivot points may be and map out potential contingency plans ahead of time. In the meantime, plan to update your fundraising strategy as current events transpire regularly.

Leveraging the Election Cycle Without Endorsing Candidates

Most nonprofits operating as 501(c)(3) organizations do much less advocacy than their 501(c)(4) nonprofit peers. In particular, 501(c)(3) nonprofits are well served when they employ advocacy tactics to engage their constituencies.

Furthermore, 501(c)(3) organizations can advocate policies that affect their missions as long as they are within a budget boundary and do not endorse any particular candidate. Alternatively, these nonprofits can engage in “advocacy-lite,”  focusing on educating your constituents about the policy issues relevant to your mission and do so without aligning with a particular party or candidate. Here’s an example from Liberty Hill Foundation, using a quiz to talk about the issue of homelessness ahead of its end-of-year appeal.

Balancing Tactical and Narrative Approaches

It’ll be important for nonprofits this year to focus on their immediate fundraising, as well as present a case for support that endures beyond the election cycle. Recall that end-of-year fundraising isn’t just about hitting this year’s goals but sustaining fruitful donor relationships. From a narrative perspective, nonprofits should focus on the impact they must make before December 31 to continue and build upon these gains through 2025.

Lessons From Your Previous End-of-Year Fundraising Efforts

Before planning any strategy, revisit your reports on previous year-end efforts and examine what worked and did not work in 2020, 2016, 2012 and 2008. Each was a presidential election year, with two featuring unprecedented socio-economic upheaval — the 2008 Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. You’re likely to find you were successful in those years if you remained flexible, communicated impactfully with donors and supporters and maintained donor trust through transparency.

Applying lessons learned from previous efforts, being tactical, topical, and well-timed, and planning for potential scenarios will all be critical to nonprofits’ success this year-end.

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.